


Radio Silence

by Skylark



Series: HSWC 2013 [8]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Study, Dirk using logic and science in an attempt to quantify emotional experience, Isolation, Loneliness, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-19
Updated: 2013-06-19
Packaged: 2017-12-15 12:33:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/849611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skylark/pseuds/Skylark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's nothing as quiet as the end of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Radio Silence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wildcard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wildcard/gifts).



> "I want you to write your life story and leave me out of it. I want to write my secret across your sky. I want to keep you in the dark. I want to leave you out in the cold." - Nicole Blackman

There's nothing as quiet as the end of the world. It's hard to explain to those who haven't experienced it: Jake with his jungle soundtrack can't comprehend it, and neither can Roxy with her cat chorus and carapacian neighbors, and neither can Jane with her father's suburban domesticity. It's a creeping kind of thing, not kept at bay by the clacking of your keyboard or the high whirr of machinery. The seagulls cry above your roof and you can hear the ocean waves lap against the supports beneath your apartment, but they don't help at all. They're not even background noise, really. You listen for sound and all you hear is the familiar rattle of your own thoughts. You play music and the silence persists underneath.

You watch Jake's shitty movies and try to imagine what everyday life must have been like for your Bro in his time. Walking down the street in his three-piece suit, the asphalt beneath his feet melting in the Texas heat. High-rises that rest on land instead of seabed. Wailing fire trucks, car alarms. Children playing in the street. They still did that back then, didn't they? Children playing is a constant in every time—even you remember doing it, however awkwardly.

You know what all of these things sound like only after they've been turned into data and piped through your stereo system. You spend hours theorizing about what these things must sound like in real life. How does a siren's echo change after the sound waves rattle against the windowpane? How does the doppler effect change the timbre of the human voice? You know the answers to these things on paper, but not in practice. You can play words through Sawtooth's speakers, you can move around your room while Roxy talks too-loudly into her headset, but it isn't the same. You know it just isn't the same.

Bro cared about you, obviously. He left you things to raise yourself with. He left you books and video games, needle-nose pliers and motherboards. You've managed to piece together what happened to him and Roxy's mom only through old newspaper clippings and a handful of faded photographs. (Was she his lover, or only his friend? You don't know. You never will.)

In all the things you've found, nowhere are you ever mentioned. There are no letters to you, no secret recordings, just interview sound bites and a signed script or two. Maybe you're hidden in a movie's liner notes; you have all of his scripts memorized, but you're still not sure. Your home is literally a shrine to a man who died with you a secret in his heart, who may have never even spoken your name even once.

It was done to protect you, you know—his greatest power was over words and he was using their absence to shield you, to keep the Batterwitch in the dark. But it keeps you, too, in the dark. Did he love you? Would he have loved you, had you grown up at his side? Would he like the person you are now? Are you enough?

You don't know.

(Perhaps—one day—you will.)


End file.
